The storing of large amounts of data has been accomplished by a variety of methodologies. One of the most successful of these is the use of magnetic recording tape. Tape drives have improved and over the years have increased capacity to compete with other forms of media storage technology. The ever-increasing need for storing greater amounts of data, however, maintains pressure on the tape drive industry to provide tape storage with increased capacity.
In the past, tape drives utilizing cassette loaded media have provided increased storage capacity by using media with increasing bit density and decreasing tape thickness. These measures allow for longer lengths of tape within the tape cassette. At a certain point, however, these methods are no longer feasible with existing technology so that a new tape cassette with a different form factor must be employed to replace the prior tape cassette. This creates a number of problems, but most especially the tape drive supporting the new tape cassette will be incompatible with the older tape cassettes having the previous form factor. This problem renders obsolete the media which may contain important archived data.
The above problem is especially acute since the very popular digital data storage (DDS) format is now in its fifth generation using the same form factor tape cassette. The prior capacity increases in the DDS format are based on format changes and thinner, longer tape. Employing a larger cassette with an increased amount of tape may render obsolete the DDS form factor tape cassettes that have been so prevalent.